SOUND BITES ARE NOT SOLUTIONS TO VA WOES

Our founding fathers were under no illusion that our nation’s freedom could be won without bombs and bullets or that there would be no casualties in war. That is why Gen. George Washington believed so strongly in the sacred bond between his new country and the soldiers and sailors who fought for its independence, especially those who died or were disabled.

Fast forward 236 years as the men and women who bear the wounds of war must battle an unwieldy veterans benefits system in order to be properly compensated. Although the Department of Veterans Affairs has spent the last three years preparing to make a revolutionary change in how it processes claims, today there are still almost 1 million veterans waiting for their benefits.

At a recent congressional hearing on the VA’s new claims processing model currently being rolled out nationally, Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, demanded that the VA stop what it was doing and suggested “blowing up” the entire system and instead grant all veterans’ claims for benefits, subject only to future random audits. This type of “magic bullet” solution may make a good sound bite, but it is not a serious solution.

Filner, a San Diego mayoral candidate, compares this process to the way the IRS handles individual tax refunds: grant and audit. Thus, rather than do the time-consuming and complex work of collecting medical evidence, examining veterans and applying the law to determine proper levels of compensation, the VA would simply grant any claim for disability compensation, at any level.

While there may be surface appeal to this idea, taking a closer look at its premise – comparing the VA to the IRS – reveals some unintended consequences and fatal flaws. IRS tax refunds are determined through an accounting process that relies on verifiable financial data to determine how much money will be refunded to taxpayers who previously deposited funds into the U.S. Treasury. By contrast, the VA benefits system relies on an evaluation and adjudication process that uses complicated medical evidence to determine service connection and degree of disability to award money from the Treasury to disabled veterans. So this proposal would solve claims adjudication problems by eliminating the adjudication.

More important, central to the IRS’s ability to catch mistakes and deter fraud is the agency’s power to recapture money, assess fines and investigate, prosecute and imprison people who commit fraud. Under the proposal in question, if a veteran requests a rating that was inaccurate according to the law and a future audit catches the error, would the veteran have to repay the money, which could be tens of thousands of dollars? Would additional fines be assessed against veterans for mistakes made? Would the veterans be investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned? Given the complexity of medical diagnosis and disability evaluation, it is unreasonable to expect veterans to accurately determine both service connection and degree of disability when even the VA can’t always get it right. The real solution requires hard work and careful planning.

To its credit, the VA has been working to improve benefits processing to make it work better for veterans. Some of those improvements have been made already, such as fast tracking more straightforward claims. Still others, like its paperless Veterans Benefits Management System, are being rolled out to 12 of its 57 regional offices in the coming months, with full deployment expected next year.

A key component of the VA’s efforts has been involving veterans service organizations, such as Disabled American Veterans (DAV), throughout the process. The VA actively sought the insights of DAV to identify major flaws in the current system and develop innovative new solutions. With the largest corps of national service officers helping veterans file claims, we have been able to share our deep experience and perspective to help the VA develop a new process designed to decide each claim right the first time. There is still much work to be done to create a system based on the cornerstones of quality, accountability, accuracy and timeliness; but DAV and other veterans organizations are committed to working with the VA so our veterans can receive the benefits they rightly deserve, when they need them.

Bombs and bullets are essential to winning wars, but rhetorical bombs and magic bullets won’t solve the VA’s problems. Nor will they help fulfill the words of President George Washington, who is reported to have said, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation.”

Instead of oversimplifying a complex process, we owe it to our nation’s injured heroes to examine the issue with due diligence and thoughtful care.

Jesinoski is executive director of Disabled American Veterans (DAV), based in Washington, D.C.